In the field of printing, it is not uncommon for a print shop to receive jobs which are intended for marking onto preprinted forms (also referred to as “preprinted media”) that have already been marked (i.e., printed) with content. For example, certain jobs may be intended for marking onto a preprinted letterhead, a preprinted template for a credit card statement, etc. Such preprinted forms help to ensure that certain pieces of content such as logos are printed at a consistent level of quality for customers.
While preprinted forms have certain benefits in a print shop, they also incur consequences. First, sheets or rolls of preprinted forms must be loaded into printers for printing, and printers have limited capacity for storing different types of media. For example, a cut-sheet printer may have a limited number of trays or bins for storing paper. The bins store types of media having a variety of sizes, colors, weights, and coatings. When media are also varied by type of preprinted content, it may become impossible to store all desired types of media at the printer. Such a system may additionally increase the amount of labor involved with restocking print media at printers, because it means that those printers have to be restocked with more types of media. Further compounding the problem, print shops may store newly received print media in humidity controlled chambers for days or weeks in order to ensure that a desired level of moisture content is achieved before printing. In environments where preprinted forms are used, they must also be treated in this manner. If no preprinted forms exist at the print shop at the desired level of moisture content, then printing may be delayed or halted altogether until the preprinted forms are properly acclimated to the print shop.
Print shop operators encounter further problems with preprinted forms when attempting to remove preprinted forms defined in a print job received at the print shop. For example, print jobs may be received in a Page Description Language (PDL) format, such as Portable Document Format (PDF) or Advanced Function Presentation (AFP). These PDL formats may themselves explicitly indicate which types of media to use, may include hints for types of media, and/or may be accompanied by job tickets that refer to specific types of media. In order to remove preprinted forms from a print job defined in PDL, it is not uncommon to have to load non-PDL source data for the print job in a composition tool that was originally used to create the print job, alter print media settings for the non-PDL source data for the print job in the composition tool, generate an entirely new PDL version of the print job from the non-PDL source data for the print job (i.e., from scratch), and submit the new PDL version of the print job to a printer for printing. For print jobs with tens of thousands of pages, such modifications are slow, manual processes that may take hours or days to complete, even when performed by a skilled print shop operator.
For at least these reasons, those who operate print shops continue to seek out enhanced techniques for managing print jobs that call out specific types of preprinted forms.